FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Henry Rollins’ mutant gene
12.04.2010
04:25 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Elvis is everywhere…and so is Henry Rollins. Along with his insatiable need for attention, it seems Henry has a mutant gene.

National Geographic Channel’s Explorer: Born to Rage? investigates the discovery behind a single “warrior gene” directly associated with violent behavior.  With bullying and violent crime making headlines, this controversial finding stirs up the nature-versus-nurture debate.  Now, Henry Rollins goes in search of carriers from diverse, sometimes violent backgrounds who agree to be tested for the genetic mutation.  Who has the warrior gene?  And are all violent people carriers? The results turn assumptions upside down.”

‘Born To Rage’ airs on December 14. Here’s some of what you can look forward to.
 

 
More mutating after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.04.2010
04:25 am
|
Hey ho! The Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ deconstructed
12.04.2010
01:32 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
I’m jumping aboard the ‘isolated tracks’ bandwagon (at the risk of hurling it off the edge of its already wobbly reality into the pit of oblivion) with this breakdown of The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop,” the debut single off their first album The Ramones released in1976.

In total, the album took seven days to record; the instruments taking three days and vocals taking four days. It also took $6,400 to record. Joey related: “Some albums were costing a half-million dollars to make and taking two or three years to record.” The band recorded using the same mic placement techniques as many orchestras used to record pieces.

The guitars are heard separately on the stereo channels — electric bass on the left, rhythm guitar on the right channel; drums and vocals are mixed in the stereo mix in the middle.”

My buddy Mickey Leigh, Joey’s brother, says The Ramones was recorded on 4 tracks. As much as I want to believe it, I have my doubts.There’s got be a couple of extra tracks in there for backup vocals and effects. But, maybe not. Producers Craig Leon and Tommy Ramone would know. Hey guys, help me out.

Tommy on his drumming style:

I just played what I wanted to hear, what I thought was necessary. I designed the drum parts specifically for the songs—they were constructed in a way that would fit the songs perfectly. They would wrap around the songs, or the songs would wrap around the drums. The whole thing has to work as a unit, sort of as a framework. We tried to coordinate everything so that everything would be one unit like that. The closest things to an influence would be people like Charlie Watts or Al Jackson. But, I didn’t really listen to drummers, I basically played what I thought was needed for the Ramones.”

Johnny described his down stroked, buzzsaw guitar style as “pure, white rock ‘n’ roll, with no blues influence.” 

Joey’s vocals sound like Ronnie Spector with a dick and a Brit inflected Queen’s (N.Y.) accent. (Ok, he didn’t have Ronnie’s range, but he had the ‘eh hos’ down).

Dee Dee plays loud and could count to 4. But, he couldn’t sing and play at the same time. Which is fucking ok. His bass playing was steady, propulsive and inexhaustible. His 1,2,3,4 mantra was utterance enuff, lodged in the collective consciousness of punk with the absoluteness of the 11th commandment of rock and roll.

How do you deconstruct the deconstructed?

2 minutes of stripped down, locked in, tight rock and roll. Everything in its place, doing exactly what it has to do. Intensely focused. Like Zen.

The sound that launched a revolution and a primer in punk rock for you kids out there.
 

 
Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.04.2010
01:32 am
|
Into the mystic with Blondie’s Gary Valentine: Rock and roll meets Carl Jung, Ouspensky, and Magick
12.02.2010
05:22 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Gary Valentine (birth name Gary Lachman) was a founding member of Blondie, playing bass with the group from 1975 to ‘77. He wrote one of the band’s defining songs ‘X Offender’ and one of their biggest hits, ‘(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear’.  He went on to form his own band The Know in 1978 and briefly played guitar with Iggy Pop in 1981. 

Valentine became a dedicated writer in 1996 and published his first book ‘Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius’ in 2001. His memoir ‘New York Rocker: My Life in The Blank Generation’ is one of the few accounts of the NY punk scene that gets it right. Since then he’s published a series of books on the occult, philosophy, psychology, suicide and politics. In this interview with Cherry Red Records’ Iain McNay, Gary discusses his musical past and his life long interest in the inner workings of the human psyche.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.02.2010
05:22 pm
|
Suicide’s Alan Vega discusses songwriting, art and life
12.02.2010
01:58 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Suicide’s Alan Vega interviewed for Tony Oursler’s Synesthesia Project.

The Synesthesia Project was a series of filmed interviews shot between 1997 and 2001 by artist Tony Oursler. Among the musicians featured were John Cage, Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch and David Byrne.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.02.2010
01:58 pm
|
The Ramones and Dead Boys: ‘Punking Out’ 1977
12.01.2010
11:00 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
These clips of The Ramones and The Dead Boys at CBGB in 1977 capture the birth of punk in all of its raw glory. Taken from the film Punking Out directed by Maggi Carson and Ric Shore, this is the scene as I remember it: unpretentious, fun, full of energy and kind of goofy.

Punking Out is a terrific time capsule of a time and place and really should be more widely seen. You can order a DVD copy at the film’s website.  The site hasn’t been updated in a few years, but the ‘shopping cart’ appears to still be functioning.

Dee Dee’s glue rant is hilarious.
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.01.2010
11:00 pm
|
Janelle Monae is the truth: Live & close-up in ‘07
12.01.2010
09:59 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
If you generally detest today’s pop music, you may be sick of hearing Janelle Monae’s name so much. And considering that she’s firmly inside the music industry machine, it’d be hard to blame you.

But unlike many women in the pop and R&B realm, the girl has pretty confidently determined and shaped her own music and visual style. Synthesizing new rock and traditional soul into the kind of futuristic brew her foreparents David Bowie and Grace Jones served up back in the day, Monae’s still got the aesthetic zeitgeist at her back.

Let’s hope she retains the integrity and panache shown below. This video is excerpted from an appearance she made in the summer of 2007, just as she released her first EP on her Wondaland Arts Society label. And even though she was already officially signed to the megalith Bad Boy label, she saw fit to play the independent Criminal Records store in the Little 5 Points district of her adopted Atlanta hometown with her guitarist Kellindo Parker. Aaaand she tore it up.

Whatever happens to Monae’s career going forward—sometimes it pays to brace for disappointment, sell-out fuckery, etc.—we’ll be able to recount a time when she seemed like the future of pop. Go girl.
 

 
More Janelle getting real after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
|
12.01.2010
09:59 pm
|
Richard Allen’s Skinhead chronicles: Oi!
11.27.2010
03:18 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 

AGGRO - That’s what Joe Hawkins and his mates were looking for, with their shaven heads, big boots and braces. Football matches, pub brawls, open-air pop concerts, hippies and Hell’s Angels all gave them chances to vent their sadistic violence. SKINHEAD is a story straight from today’s headlines - portraying with horrifying vividness all the terror and brutality that has become the trademark of these vicious teenage malcontents.

Richard Allen was a Canadian-born writer who could churn out pulp novels as regular as drunks take beer shits. In the early 1970’s, he got a gig writing novels about skinheads for New English Library. He eventually spewed out 17 of em. His first novel ‘Skinhead’ struck a chord with British skinheads and his teenage gangster novels became hugely popular. His stories of the biker, mod, teddy boy and Oi! culture of 70’s Britain became an essential, yet darker and less fashionable, part of London’s punk culture. While The Sex Pistols and The Clash were ultimately a bunch of hippie idealists, the skinhead scene was working and non-working class anger tied to racial resentment and a sense of destiny lost. The Two-Tone bands entered the scene and built a bridge between the cerebral revolution of the punkers and the racial paranoia of the skins. The baldies racist inclinations were defused by their love of reggae, ska, and rock steady. Skinhead moonstomp.

Update: Paul Gallagher reports that “in the 60s and 70s skinheads were black and white - though the movement was hijacked by some members of the National Front (extreme right Nazi organization).  Trouble with Allen’s books was their painting skins in a sometimes negative light. Ska and Two Tone records reclaimed skinheads in the late 70s through The Specials and Madness, etc.”

Check out this solid documentary on Richard Allen and the legions of kids for whom he was the voice of their disenfranchisement and anger anguish. 
 

 
Parts 2 - 7 after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
|
11.27.2010
03:18 am
|
Rowland S. Howard & Ollie Olsen Interview 1977
11.26.2010
05:42 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
At the time this video was shot in 1977,  Ollie and Rowland were playing together in The Young Charlatans. Rowland later joined The Birthday Party. Ollie went on to work with many bands and eventually became a composer and producer of trance music. But here they are in their teens energized by punk and ready to detonate a punk rock explsosion Down Under. Such innocent faces, such deadly intent.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
11.26.2010
05:42 am
|
Dee Dee Ramone Contacts Fan From Rock & Roll Heaven
11.24.2010
04:23 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
A painting of Dee Dee Ramone and a two-page note were placed in a stairwell of the Chelsea Hotel by a fan named Tara. In her note, Tara writes that she fears she may have offended Dee Dee by calling her portrait of Dee Dee ‘crap’ and his spirit responded by turning off her cell phone.

The portrait is rather…um…impressionistic.

The Hotel Chelsea blog reports:

It seems that Tara’s dark pilgrimage was rewarded with a message from beyond. This is the first Dee Dee spirit story that has come our way, but we’re sure there will be many more to follow.

 
image
 
image

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
11.24.2010
04:23 pm
|
The Beme Seed: God Inside
11.22.2010
07:08 pm
Topics:
Tags:

In place of the DM talkshow this week, here is a music video for an enigmatic cult band called The Beme Seed that I co-directed in 1989. The Beme Seed were fronted by Kathleen Lynch, the utterly psychotic go-go dancer whose distinctly dada take on the art of burlesque made Butthole Surfers’ concerts so demonically powerful in the 1980s. Although never an official member of the group, she was a major, major part of their reputation for legendary live shows (along with the pyrotechnic cymbals, Gibby’s flaming hand, the films of dental and penis reconstructive surgery, etcetera, etcetera). Kathleen’s inspired go-go dancing was as surreal as it was pagan. At one late 80s New York show I saw (held at The Ritz nightclub, now Webster Hall), she went from sporting a huge afro wig and an extremely hairy “merkin” to being completely naked (and shaved) and then back again, as violent strobe lights provided cover—in other words, it happened in such a way that it seemed like a special effect to the audience—stunning, I tell you. Later in the show, she came out nude, painted gold and wearing tennis rackets on her feet.

For someone who has made an entire career of seeking out oddballs, I’d have to say that Kathleen Lynch, truly, is one of the weirdest people I’ve ever met. But in a good way! There was nothing negative or mentally unstable about her, she was just fuckin’ odd. But cheerfully weird. Her weirdness was organic, not forced, let’s just say. I’d call her a hippie, but she was too punk rock for that. She was a most singular creature, Kathleen, fitting no easy categories.
 
image
Above, Kathleen Lynch on the cover the Butthole Surfer’s Double Live album.

Here are a few statements made about Kathleen Lynch by the Butthole Surfers themselves:

Paul Leary - “The whole band got scabies once, and we had to hold Kathleen down and get her medicated. She had decided she didn’t want to kill the scabies because they were her friends.”

Gibby Haynes - We’d roll into a town, I was booking the shows, we didn’t know where the clubs were. We’d literally pull over somebody and say, “Hey, where do the queers hang out? Where’s the college area?” Just follow the queers to the club. We played the Celebrity Club in Atlanta when RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and all the other drag queens were hanging out there before they all moved to New York. It was this weird, artsy, funky, disco crowd in Atlanta that for some reason liked us. Kathleen was friends with this friend of ours from Atlanta.

Teresa Taylor (AKA Teresa Nervosa) - Later we met Kathleen again in New York. She was working for Sex World in Times Square. She was known as Ta Da the Shit Lady, she could really control her shit. We took her on the road as our dancer and started building the whole package. She was kind of into her spiritual thing; she stopped speaking for a year, and I asked her why, and she wrote down that God had told her to take a vow and stop speaking. She loved the human body, smells of the human body, dirty socks, urine, things of the body were really beautiful to her, b.o. was beautiful, and we had a hard time making her bathe. I remember once we pretty much had to hold her down and do her laundry, and she was yelling, “no, no!”

Paul Leary - We were at a house and we watched Kathleen perfectly pee a spoonful of urine without spilling a drop, she put that teaspoon of urine into a pot of old dried macaroni and cheese, and that’s when this drag queen came in and started eating the dried macaroni and cheese with that spoon and we were like, Felicia, didn’t you just see Kathleen putting her pee in that pan? She said, “I’m eating on the side.”

Jeff Pinkus - We all went down to Key Largo—it was one of our first vacations that we actually took as a band. We decided to go snorkeling, but Ta Da stayed on the boat with the captain. We come back and the captain of the ship was just looking at us like we were all crazy, and we couldn’t figure out what was going on, he wouldn’t talk to us. Later we found out that when we were in the water Ta Da had thrown up and had diarrhea at the same time. She had the diarrhea in her hand and she threw up into the water. She said she was feeding the fish.

Paul Leary - “What’s my resume going to say? For the past 12 years I’ve been touring with someone who shits in their hand and feeds it to the fish in front of a bunch of people?”

Okay, I think you must get the picture by now. (So, she was a little eccentric. Haven’t we all shit in our hands and fed the fishies at least once in our lives? No?)

When I met Kathleen, I think she was paying the bills by being a professional dog walker, but she’d been a “live nude girl” at Sex World in Times Square. That’s where she got her evocative nickname. Since I’m sure this has already been told elsewhere (and because it’s so damed funny) here’s the gist of it: She was working, had eaten some Chinese take-out and gotten food poisoning. While with a customer, she had an “accident,” which caused the poor guy to run out of the booth, exclaiming what had happened. The octogenarian woman who owned and ran the place—one of old skool 42nd St’s more memorable characters—could be seen there daily wearing a mic around her neck the way Bob Dylan wears his harmonica, hawking her live nude girls over the PA system. Without missing a beat, she started hyping, “Step right up guys, ta-da, it’s the shit lady!”

I heard that story directly from Kathleen, herself. I recall being in tears from laughing so hard the way she told it.

So the Beme Seed. I don’t know much about the actual band. I think they were actually broken up at the time we made the video and may have reformed with different members later. The music of Beme Seed was psychically disturbing and featured a lot of chanting and quasi-formless guitar feedback. They sounded really evil and their live show was like a LOUD seance. (The closest comparison I can think of is the early Virgin Prunes). They made three albums for the Blast First! record label, who also distributed Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Afghan Whigs and Big Black and disbanded for good in 1992.

The entire budget for the “God Inside” video was around $60 bucks. It was co-directed with a friend of mine named Alan Henderson, who was also the editor. Although it may seem very “so what?” by today’s standards, the digital layering on this video had only recently made possible, due to the introduction of what was then a brand new digital video compositing computer known as the Abacas A-62 (which cost $160,000 at the time—Alan and I were both working in a high tech digital video post-production facility and used their expensive equipment off-hours). What Alan did was to feed an signal through the device and then he could control the level of feedback via an analog video switcher while he controlled the output. (Such was the level of technological advancement 21 years ago. Now, of course, After Effects is a million times better than anything available then for a fraction of the price).

We considered the “God Inside” video an homage to Kenneth Anger, albeit one with tiny, tiny budget. Kathleen herself, initially at least, was not down with this treatment for the song, but she also didn’t want to turn down a professionally produced music video, something she knew she’d never be able to afford otherwise, so she went with it. (Her idea, which surprised me when she told me about it, was to use all found footage and archival films of people doing nice things for each other—a nurse helping a patient, someone pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair, uniformed school crossing-guards with children—and I was like “What?” She also told me that the song was about the female orgasm and masturbating, so the “happy people” concept was a real disconnect for me).

The costume, as such, consisted of Kathleen painting her naked body white, wrapping tin foil around her teeth and cutting a lock of hair from her head and gluing it to her chin. She also had these yellow, almost glow in the dark, strands of fake Halloween costume hair which she glued to her arms. The overall effect, I think you’ll agree, was striking. I also had something I really wanted to shoot for this and that was Kathleen emerging from water like some sort of sea creature. To get this shot, we got up at 4:30AM and hightailed it up to Central Park for sunrise and hoped no one would be around. Kathleen was wrapped only in a sheet. There were a few joggers, but we got the shot.

In the studio, we shot take after take, especially of the lip-sync. I wanted her to do the speaking in tongues part at the end and really go to town on that, but each take was too subdued. She complained that we were working her too hard, but I insisted. Finally, I think she was so mad at me, that she let loose and did what I wanted and you can see this in the final video. As soon as that was in the can, we turned off the camera and went home.

When the video was finished, I showed it to Kathleen and she cried tears of joy. Then she asked me if I could leave the room and she watched it several more times alone. She really loved it. However, later that night when I showed it to the young woman I was living with at the time, she was so freaked out that she asked me—I’m not kidding—to remove it from our apartment! (Turn it up loud, so it seems extra infernal!)

Needless to say, a music video featuring full frontal nudity was never going to be shown on MTV or anywhere else for that matter. The “God Inside” video, made 21 years ago, for all intents and purposes (a few crappy YouTube versions aside) is being premiered here now. I hope you enjoy it, if that’s the right word…

Beme Seed (The Book of Seth’ at Julian Copes’ Head Heritage)

Beme Seed MySpace page

How Did It Come to This? An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey (The Rumpus)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Bongwater: The Power of Pussy

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.22.2010
07:08 pm
|
Page 128 of 139 ‹ First  < 126 127 128 129 130 >  Last ›